US Officials Knew NSA Spying Programme Was Likely Illegal

A formerly secret report on the NSA’s warrant-less surveillance was published yesterday evening. It’s a detailed look into the history of the Stellarwind surveillance program—one that makes it clear that US government officials repeatedly questioned its legality and efficacy.

Stellarwind was the code name for the US President’s Surveillance Program, a wide-reaching information-gathering effort started by then-President George W. Bush after 9/11. The report was written by inspectors general from five different government agencies in 2009, but kept classified (aside from a heavily truncated version) until last night, when it was released following a Freedom of Information Act request from the New York Times.

Though some parts remain redacted, the report provides damning evidence that the Stellarwind program had a soggy, flawed legal basis, that the intense secrecy surrounding the program made it less effective, and that it’s still hard to pinpoint if snooping on millions of Americans actually stopped any terrorist plots.

The report highlights, for instance, that government officials knew that US Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo’s memo on the legal basis of the program was flat-out wrong.

Yoo justified the lack of warrants by citing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s exception that warrants for national-security wiretaps are not required during wartime. The (big, fat, awful, and obvious) problem with Yoo’s justification: That exception is only for the first fifteen days of war.